I can remember we would get REFORGER units for two weeks from the states ide.They wre supposed to be our re-endforcements when the Soviets came out of Faude Gap.

Hehe, I served in the Fulda Gap, but 10 years after the reunification. Basically nothing had changed, except some troops had been dissolved and the money was all gone. We still had one depot shack where they had painted a huge map of the Inner German Border on one wall. It had NATO and WP tanks painted along the border and looked rather grim.

I guess some of you might know Schwarzenborn and its maneuver range. One of those fantastic places with 300 raining, snowfall, overcast days per year. But the only place I know, where the morning is bright and the noon all foggy.

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ad astra per aspera
liber et infractus

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." –- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

A 6mm Padawan!

Good...

@ ursus major:

I helped Jim write CWGH, and I appreciate your review. To help address the point about large scenarios on 6x4 boards (specifically the "Soviet Assault" scenario - which I wrote), please see this AAR of one of the playtests for that scenario:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3222

As you can see, a 20mm game of that scenario fits on a 6x4 board. It is a bit snug, but it does work, even with the village, hill, and creek. Just thought seeing it in action woudl help visualize what it could look like.

Again, thanks for the review. As both a customer of AA Games, and a member of their "inner sanctum" (or is that "inner sanitarium"?), I know for a fact that they do listen to and take into consideration customer comments and suggestions.

Cap'n Jim

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Warning - incoming fire has the right-of-way!

Thanks for the AAR. We played the small version today, but forgot some rules and I hope we'll give it another try soon.

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ad astra per aspera
liber et infractus

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." –- Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Well, the book hooked me into yet another period, and brought me back to this forum after too long an absence!

And I've just bought a second copy (from Amazon UK) as a birthday present for a friend of mine....

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Fish & chips anyone?

Glad you enjoyed the book, sir!

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

Indeed Director Carpenter, it has me inspired for a new games project for the start of 2012!

I especially liked the three formats to show how things had gone 'hot'. I may not have back-read all the threads in the forum, but may I ask, why did you choose 1986 specifically?

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Fish & chips anyone?

Very scientifically - it was the one the more memorable years I was in the Air Force.

It's also right at the cusp where western tech was starting to take off, so we could do games with older NATO gear if we wanted, but we could also use the newer stuff as well - both were in the field at the time.

We didn't stick too slavishly to the year, either, as you may have noticed.

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

Aah, I see. Well I think you picked well.

I'm note-making to set a background for this new project and events in the first half of '86 work in well. And I get your point on the kit too. British had the '85 DPM come out, from supposed lessons learnt in '82 on the Falklands, but for many it didn't quite work that well, so there was a great mash-up of combined stuff.

Impressed, I think it works well as a timeline.

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Fish & chips anyone?

Another reason I picked '86 was that was a year in which I most felt that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. Events piled up and it really felt like the balloon was bound to go up any day. I wouldn't have been surprised to have got the call on any given night.

I remember several mobility spin-ups that we did that were so serious that we were all half-way convinced that they were just telling us it was an exercise so nobody would make a run for it.

Of course I was young, then, and thought it was all pretty cool stuff. It's all much scarier when I look back on it now that I have some grasp of my own mortality.

Most of us "Cold Warriors" were pretty lucky. We worked hard, trained hard, but landed soft - I got out without seeing any shooting or suffering any real hardships and I count my blessings for it. One of my best friends, who ended up a career special operations guy wasn't so lucky - he got to see and do a lot of amazing things, but he paid for it with his health. A lot more went on back then than we'll probably know about for another decade or two . . .

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Shawn Carpenter
Game Designer, Ambush Alley Games

"I don't wanna be remembered as the guy who died because he underestimated the threat posed by a monkey."

I will always appreciate and respect those who served at such a time - yourself and some friends of mine. I came close to getting into our Reserves (London TA) because end of '85 and start of '86 there was a real drive amongst the employers in our area to encourage their own staff to sign up. A greater than average amount of Regulars had left in the two or three years after the Falkands, and it seemed like a lot of emphasis went into building the Reserves up. But I didn't - went a different way instead, and because of that decision I'm still married 23 years later I still tell her I would have got less for Armed Robbery.

I have friends now, ex-Army and ex-RAF, who served in this period. All of them now look back and say how mad it was. One of them has said, it was the disparate scale of how you could get bumped off - shot by an AK, squidged under a tank's tracks, or vapourised in a nuclear near-miss. He found it mindbending, spent a lot of his free time 'living' (German beer and German girls!) and just waiting to get rolled out to Belfast for another tour.

But it's a formulative period of our world's history, and like you say, I believe there is still considerably more to come out. And that will be a good thing

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Fish & chips anyone?

Love the book, although obviously not enough Brits. :-)

Incidentally, I just noticed that Robert Forest-Webb's novel Chieftains, which was going for £70+ a copy, has recently become available on kindle:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chieftains-ebook/dp/B006ISI2DK/

Now to see if it is any good!

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-Erik

Turns out it is Pretty Damn Good.

Highly recomended.

It also turns out I am pretty nostalgic for the days when the Free World faced the ravening Soviet Hordes across the Fulda Gap!

Does anyone have any suggestions for adapting the (small) Soviet Assault scenario to have the BAOR replacing the US? I want to see Challengers gunning down Warpac tanks!

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-Erik

Simply replace US troops and vehicles with their British counterparts. This should be possible with many of the scenarios in the book.